Isabel Healthcare Blog

It’s Christmas Eve and the festivities are definitely underway! Wherever you are in the world, and whatever you choose to celebrate, we hope you all have a restful, warm and healthy end to 2019.....

Chronic pelvic pain is pain in the pelvic area (below your belly button and above your hips) which lasts 6 months or longer and is affecting your quality of life.  It affects 15-20% of women of reproductive age. Chronic pelvic pain can be intermittent or constant and it may present as a dull ache or it can be sharp.  There may be a pattern to when chronic pelvic pain develops if its related to menstruation (monthly period/menses), it may occur before or after eating (postprandial), whilst passing urine, or maybe during sexual intercourse.  Chronic pelvic pain is difficult to diagnose, treat and cure and so is a frustrating symptom for patient and doctor. 

As we head into the last month of the 2019, and for many of us the busiest month too, we can find ourselves getting more and more tired, as we try to balance work, the holidays, and visiting family and friends. What’s more, at this time of year, particularly in climates where the weather is getting colder, there are many more illnesses and colds going around, which can all contribute to us feeling a little less spring in our step. We’ve rounded up some of the common causes of tiredness and fatigue, varying from the more serious conditions to look out for, to the less serious such as simply not getting enough shut eye.

In the United Kingdom (UK), adults over 80 years are the fastest growing population.  Around a quarter of the population in the UK are over 60 years old, and by 2030, this figure will rise to a third of the population.  In the United States, in 2018 those age over 65 accounted for 52 million (16% of the total population) and projections currently estimate that by 2060 this will increase to 95 million (23% of the total population).

This month is Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Month when charities launch campaigns to raise awareness about this progressive lung disease which is thought to affect around 1% of the global population (increasing to 10% for those aged over 65). As symptoms are non-specific, the disease is often misdiagnosed, which is why increasing awareness is so critical. While in most cases, no cure is currently available, early diagnosis can massively improve a patient’s outcome.

So, you’ve got a niggling health issue that won’t go away… but the GP can’t see you again for 3 weeks. Onto the internet to see if Dr Google can help. Sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone.

November is Epilepsy Awareness Month in the US, so in this week’s post we’re going over the basics of this neurological condition that affects more people than you might think. 1 in 26 of us will experience epilepsy at some point in our life, and in the US alone around 150,000 people are diagnosed with epilepsy each year. There are many different types of epilepsy, different types of seizures, and different symptoms for these seizures.

There have been several announcements this week, both in the US and the UK, and also in Australia, on some new drugs that will become available for cystic fibrosis patients. Pharmaceutical company Vertex have reached deals in the UK and Australia for the double-combination drugs Orkambi and Symkevi, while in the US, the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) has approved a new 3-drug treatment marketed as Trikafta.

Everyone has experienced stomach pain at some point in their life. Often the cause is obvious, such as a stomach bug or too many sit ups at the gym, and the symptoms will disappear in a day or two. Sometimes, however, the cause of a stomach ache isn’t clear, and this can be quite unnerving. There are a few clues when assessing the cause of a stomach ache, and one of these clues is the location. If your stomach ache is in a particular area of the stomach, or abdomen, you can eliminate other causes and narrow down to the cause. One such type of stomach ache dictated by the area of the abdomen is called epigastric pain.

Take a look at the stats for Stomach Cancer, also known as Gastric Cancer, and you’ll realise it’s not an easy one to diagnose. Out of an estimated 28,000 cases in the US each year, nearly a third, 10,960, are expected to die. The figures in the UK are even worse with only 15% of patients expected to live beyond 10 years. The real clue lies in the fact that nearly a third of British patients first present with the illness in their emergency or A&E department, and given that the typical initial symptoms such as indigestion, wind or heartburn aren’t exactly emergency symptoms, this implies that most patients are experiencing a substantial and often fatal delay in getting a diagnosis. As stomach cancer symptoms are often easily mistaken for less serious conditions, it’s understandable that both patient and doctor won’t suspect a potentially fatal cancer as the cause. Which is why we’ve devoted this week’s blog to discussing the symptoms and when to seek advice, in the hopes we can help sufferers present much earlier to their doctor and consequently find a cure.